"Since the first rumors of an Apple switch to Intel, everyone has been wondering about the potential speed of Intel-based Macs. Last week's announcement of the first shipping Intel-based Macs brought with it the promise of a major speed boost: Apple's Web pages suggest that the new iMac, powered by the Intel Core Duo processor, is twice as fast as its G5 predecessor. Macworld Lab's tests do show that the new Intel-based iMac is faster than the iMac G5 when running native applications. However, we found that those improvements are generally much less than what Apple claims is a 2x improvement in speed."

Was that intended as sarcasm or a joke? Apple has consistently been completely dishonest about benchmarking. They touted the G5 as being the fastest personal computer on the market -- even though no standardized benchmarking software supported that claim.

Apple has consistently been completely dishonest about benchmarking. They touted the G5 as being the fastest personal computer on the market -- even though no standardized benchmarking software supported that claim.

Look on the bright side: Once Apple retires PPC for good, then these "our processor is fastest" debates will disappear for good. Users will be able to compare for themselves by running a copy of OS X on a legacy Intel box and then comparing it to the newly upgraded hardware. 'Course, that won't stop Apple from claiming that updates to OS X yield unbelievable perf gains (which the fanatics will buy -- and skeptics will roll their eyes over).